Conroy’s Rules of Driving

Rule 15 - Put the cell phone down.

Back in the summer I wrote a post imploring¹ my readers to use their car’s turn signals. Too many drivers, it seems, fail to do this simple yet important act. I meant that post as a (hopefully entertaining) lecture on good driving behavior. An ulterior motive was to express a frustration that I know many of us feel when driving, with an idea (read: hope) that venting in a public forum would somehow be cathartic and lessen my private frustration. No such luck. In fact, if anything, I’ve grown more vigilant of poor driving habits and consequently even more frustrated in the months since, and in that vein I’ve decided to list my rules of driving, highlighting all the many ways that we as a driving public have made driving less safe, more stressful, and indeed more antisocial than it needs to be.

Let’s start with a simple premise: driving is a social activity and as such it demands you, the driver, to be socially responsible. You, the driver, for the majority of your trips, might be alone.  Most of the time your driving will be for a purpose, heading to or from a specific place for a specific reason. You drive from your house to your work; you drive to the store to get groceries for tonight’s dinner; you drive to your friends’ house on Sunday to watch a football game, or to take your kids to sports practice, or to pick someone up from a school event. In other words, most of the time, for all the myriad reasons you go from one place to another, your trips are very personal and individual. This is true, certainly, but seeing driving in this light can lead to a perspective where you view your trips (and the goals that those trips serve) as of paramount importance, and that everyone else on the road is an obstacle in your way, delaying your trip, making your life harder. Such thinking is abetted by the fact that so many of us drive in a “car cocoon” as I like to term it, windows up, radio on, cut off from all the other drivers in their car cocoons. The other drivers become mere abstractions, unknown and barely glimpsed.

It’s this kind of perspective, I believe, that leads to so many of the bad driving behaviors that, well, drive all of us up a wall. How many times have you heard someone say that drivers from fill-in-the-blank² are terrible? This lament is universal (at least in the U.S.) because we all see so much bad driving every day. When we envision ourselves, individually, in our car as the central and most important person on the road, it leads to a disregard of other drivers, to laziness in our driving, and to rationalizing away our bad behaviors. It’s why so often the rules of the road seem to have been never learned, forgotten, or ignored. You must fight this thinking. You must be responsible to other drivers on the road. Understand that we all share the road; that we all agree to follow rules that make everyone’s trip as orderly and safe as possible; that driving is a privilege earned – you must earn your driver’s license – and that privilege comes with a responsibility to yourself, to the passengers in your car, and to everyone else on the road. We all benefit from driving responsibly. This is the same type of responsibility that leads you to throw your trash into cans instead of hurling it into the gutter, or pay for the things you want instead of stealing them, or to respect the personal freedoms of others. It’s the type of responsibility that makes modern society work.

So keeping this perspective in mind, onto the rules.

[As I get to this list of Conroy’s Rules of Driving, know that while I’m declaring myself a crusader for good driving, I know that the history of crusaders is full of hot air and hypocrisy. So be it, I might not be a saint of the road, but I’ll still champion the cause.]

Conroy’s Rules of Driving

1. Be aware. This may seem obvious, but checking your mirrors, being alert to what’s happening behind you and in the road some distance ahead, looking around as you approach an intersection, just being aware of the general road situation around you. All of this is supposed to be second nature for experienced drivers, but I get the sense it isn’t based on the many rules below that aren’t being followed. One of the primary reasons is that far too many people drive distracted and as a result do not give their primary attention where it belongs, to driving. Too many drivers are on autopilot.

2. Use your turn signal. I already went into this in great detail in my earlier post, but the general idea is to use your turn signal any time you change lanes or make a turn so that the other drivers around you know what you’re intending to do.

3. Be considerate about merging. We’ve all been there, you need to merge out of your lane and into the next lane for any of a number of valid reasons. Yet the stubborn driver in the next lane won’t let you in. As if he/she owns that plot of road or driving is some sort of competitive activity and letting you in front is ceding an advantage (like you’re getting the better of them). And I suspect that many (or most) of us on occasion have been pretty inconsiderate in not letting a driver merge in front of us. Get over it, we’re living in a society, let the driver merge. Letting a car in front of you makes no difference in your trip, but it does make overall traffic flow better.

On the flip side, it’s also a merger’s responsibility to maneuver in a timely fashion. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a driver continue in a lane that is closed a short distance ahead with the expectation that they can merge out of the lane at the last possible moment. Waiting till the last opportunity to merge just causes worse congestion at the merge point and slows everyone down overall. Do everyone a favor and merge (using your turn signal) earlier than at the last possible moment.

And a final piece of advice, please give a thank you wave to anyone who lets you merge in front of them. It's an easy, common courtesy, and it humanizes the whole driving experience; it gets you out of your car cocoon for just a moment.

4. Obey traffic signs. My day job as a transportation engineer has taught me that there is an awful lot of thought that goes into every traffic sign put on the road. All of this effort is needed to ensure a simple outcome: provide clear and consistent direction to drivers to improve overall traffic operations. If you ignore or flout these signs, you’re making traffic worse for everyone else. A good example is disobeying the NO LEFT TURN sign. Often these signs apply during specific time periods, say, rush hours, to eliminate left turns at intersections in conditions where traffic is heavy and left turns are difficult and/or dangerous. If you decide you’re going to make a left turn at an intersection where a NO LEFT TURN sign is in place, you’ll just end up backing up traffic behind you as you likely wait for an extended period for a gap in opposing traffic that allows a turn (often when the light turns red and opposing traffic stops). This is a cardinal example of bad behavior. You’ve decided that your trip is so much more important that everyone else’s that you can ignore a rule that right’s there in front of you in black and white³ – and actively delay a lot of other drivers in the process.

5. Use your lights. If it’s getting dark (or not yet light), or raining, or foggy, or any other situation where conditions are a bit adverse, turn on your lights. The purpose here is as much to let other drivers know you’re there as it is to allow you to see well. In any case, it makes the road safer for you and everyone else.

"Bus Good, Train Bad"

by Conroy

Rendering of a "future" high-speed rail train in California

Sometimes exciting ideas are bad. Take the title quote, which I read in a recent Bloomberg article by Edward Glaeser the accomplished Harvard economist [1]. These four words, according to Glaeser, sum up the accepted wisdom gleaned from 40 years of transportation economics at Harvard. And they are directly at odds with one of the long-held – and long out-of-reach – goals of many American transportation planners: true high-speed rail (HSR in planning and transit lingo).

High Speed Rail in America
For many decades (if not longer) there has been a desire among transit advocates to connect America’s cities with a web of efficient, clean, fast trains. This transit mode would act as an environmentally friendly alternative to the automobiles that crowd urban highways and dirty the air, and to expensive, polluting planes. Advocates point to the successful HSR systems in Western Europe and Japan [2] and models for a future American system. Indeed, HSR does offer advantages over other transportation modes, but only under the right conditions. Those conditions include densely populated areas along the train route, relatively underdeveloped highway infrastructure, high gas prices, existing heavy passenger rail use, and relatively short distances. These conditions are needed because HSR becomes economically feasible when ridership is high. And ridership will only be high if it’s more cost effective for people to use HSR than it is to use other modes, or borrowing terms from economics, if the combination of cost (the price of a ticket) and duration (the time the trip takes) are lower than competing modes (road and air).

In Japan, where there are 65 million people living tightly along the 250 mile corridor between Tokyo and Osaka, HSR is an ideal solution. Similarly, the densely packed corridor in France between Paris and Lyon is a prime location. In Japan and France gas prices and population densities are high, intercity freeways are less extensive, and major urban areas are closely spaced. And even in these locations, HSR like other transit modes isn’t self-supporting. It requires government investment to fund the capital expense and support the high operating costs [3]. This investment is justified because of the high value of time saved by moving so many riders.

If you look at the United States, the conditions for HSR are far less favorable. Gas is cheap [4], the interstate highway system is vast, and excepting the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston [5], population centers are widely spaced across the continent. Today, on a national level, only about one half of one percent of passenger trips are made by train of any sort and just one tenth of one percent are taken on intercity rail. The Northeast Corridor is the most heavily used intercity passenger train route, but Amtrak’s semi-high-speed Acela train [6] deployed on that route only accounts for about three million trips annually. A number dwarfed by automobile trips on Interstate 95, the parallel freeway.

Despite these realities, the political support for HSR has grown in recent years. In 2009, as part of the much-touted, mid-recession American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, Congress included, at the President’s urging, $8 billion for intercity rail, with an emphasis on HSR. Since then the Federal Railroad Administration and many state-level transportation agencies have been studying potential routes all over the country. The furthest down the track in these efforts is California, which rather fancifully expects to start the building an HSR line later this year. Unfortunately for HSR advocates, numerous studies (prominent examples here and here) have demonstrated the massive flaws in California’s plan. Given the huge costs and time to develop HSR, and that funding and grass roots support is largely absent, HSR is likely to go nowhere in California or anywhere else (with the lone potential exception of the Northeast Corridor).

Whose Money?

by Conroy

1 World Trade Center under construction

Drivers approaching lower Manhattan in 2011 have seen the steady rise of a new skyscraper, 1 World Trade Center. By December its steel superstructure already stood over 1,100 feet above street level, dominating the famous skyline around it. When the building is “topped out” next year it will be the tallest building in the United States (in fact the tallest in the entire western hemisphere).  1 World Trade Center is the most spectacular part of the massive World Trade Center redevelopment effort, which includes several other towers, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (the memorial is open but the museum is still under construction), and a soon-to-be-completed transportation hub (road/rail/bus terminal). These are just some of the tangible signs that after a decade New York City has largely (physically) recovered from the 9/11 attacks.

Drivers Sue the World Trade Center?
Not long after 1 World Trade Center peeked above the surrounding buildings, the American Automobile Association (AAA), a service and advocacy group for over 50 million drivers, sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). Why? Well this fall PANYNJ announced significant toll increases, up to 50%, on its many New York area bridges and tunnels, which include the heavily trafficked Lincoln and Holland tunnels and George Washington Bridge. The higher tolls were needed, according to PANYNJ, to pay for ongoing facility maintenance and planned improvements and to cover some of the cost of the World Trade Center construction. You see, in addition to bridges, tunnel, airports, seaports, and transit, PANYNJ also owns several commercial properties the most visible being the World trade Center site. The AAA lawsuit claimed that the PANYNJ toll increases were an unfair burden to drivers and that toll revenues would be diverted from the bridges and tunnels that toll payers use to unrelated commercial enterprises. In other words, and rather nefariously in AAA’s eyes, 1 World Trade Center was rising high above Manhattan on the dime of drivers who would never benefit from the development.

PANYNJ has countered that in fact they misspoke and all of the revenue raised from increased tolls will be used on their transportation facilities and not a nickel to pay for the World Trade Center construction. Both sides argued their case in court last week and a ruling on the issue might be made by the end of the year. In light of PANYNJ’s modified account of how the toll revenues will be used, I foresee the new toll rates being upheld and no refunds for any AAA drivers, but I’m not a lawyer and won’t wager on any particular outcome.

This whole case may seem like one advocacy group attacking one issue from one public agency, but I think it’s a microcosm of a larger debate being held in many forms nationwide. Namely, when it comes to public money, whether it’s tolls or taxes, whose money is it and who gets to decide how it will be spent? In the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, Republicans across the country benefited greatly from a broad grassroots effort, the Tea Party movement, which essentially argued that elected officials and public agencies were incapable of responsibly using tax dollars. And therefore, all tax increases were unacceptable and major spending programs dubious. On the national level we’ve seen the results of last year’s elections: A tooth-and-nail struggle to get any spending programs passed through Congress, and none of those that eventually were passed included any tax increases. Clearly one’s sympathy or antipathy to the Tea Party movement’s agenda rests in your political and fiscal perspective, but this is one of the fundamental arguments in America today.

Whose Money is It?
So going back to the core question, whose money is it and who has the right to decide how it is spent?

Better Cars and Worse Roads

by Conroy

The future belongs to fuel efficient cars

In June, the Obama Administration proposed substantial changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (known by the acronym CAFE). The changes would require a near doubling in the fuel efficiency, measured in miles per gallon (mpg), for passenger cars and light trucks. The automobile industry, represented by most of the major auto manufacturers (Volkswagen being the major exception), is supporting the new CAFE standards (with a few modest adjustments). As announced in late July, the fleet average fuel efficiency for new passenger cars and light trucks by 2025 will have to be 54.5 mpg. This follows on the heels of earlier regulations that will require new cars and trucks to have a fleet average fuel efficiency of 35.5 mpg by 2016.

Earlier this month the president announced the first ever fuel efficiency standards for heavy trucks (18-wheelers, tankers, etc.). These standards would require percentage improvements in fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions by 2018 based on the type of truck and how it will be used. The American Trucking Association (ATA), an industry advocacy group representing trucking companies and commercial truck owners, is supporting the new standards.

The immediate objective of these new rules is to reduce gasoline consumption and ghg emission, with the larger goal of increasing energy independence, spurring the development of clean car technology, and improving air quality. As with all federal rules, there will be numerous loopholes, exemptions, options to pay penalties in lieu of compliance, and complicated methods for actually measuring fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. However, assuming these new rules are fully (or even largely) implemented, there will be major ramifications for the vehicles you and I buy and drive over the next fourteen years (and beyond). But perhaps an even bigger effect will be not to the vehicles we drive in, but to the roads we drive on.

Speeding and its Discontents

by Conroy

[Note: John Fowles wrote that "all cynicism masks a failure to cope." This is likely true, and perhaps you'll recognize that sentiment in this post, but what follows does have basis in reality.]

Speed kills, or so the saying goes. Speeding might be dangerous, but one thing is for certain, driving faster than the posted speed limit can get you a citation, fine, and if egregious enough, affect your license and insurance. As a basic idea this works, travel too fast, unsafe for a given road, and you'll be penalized. Like other law enforcement activities, speed enforcement is intended to protect other drivers, pedestrians, and the public at large from dangerous behavior. That's the theory anyway, the reality is something different.


Attitudes about speeding vary greatly, but I like the old George Carlin joke:

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

So true. For full disclosure, I'm a "maniac" not an "idiot", but still, based on my observations how many "idiots" are actually traveling below the speed limit? Not many. This reality has always bothered me and I have two major objections to speed limits and enforcement: (1) speed limits are set and apply equally to any driver on the road irrespective of their vehicle, experience, or outside conditions, and (2) speed enforcement, in real life, is sporadic and arbitrary. I'm not the only one to hold these objections, and I think this perspective is valid enough to call into question the standard approaches to speed enforcement.

Speed Limits

Let's consider speed limits first. As a transportation engineer, I'm an expert on road design, so let me share a few insights on how speed limits are determined. First, roads are designed based on their context (rural, urban, flat, hilly), classification (freeway, arterial, local road, etc.), and an associated "design speed". This means the various characteristics of a road, curves (horizontal and vertical), cross slope, lane widths, roadside features, etc. are set based on idealized vehicle characteristics and driver behavior at that speed. As a general rule, it is accepted by traffic engineers that drivers will travel over a road at the speed at which they are comfortable. The wider, straighter, flatter the road, the faster drivers will travel. The measured 85th percentile speed of all vehicles is often used to derive this comfortable operating speed. In practice, a very small percentage of drivers will actually travel at an unsafe speed for the design of the road. Speed limits are supposed to be set based on the design speed. But often for political reasons speed limits are set artificially low. Think of how you frequently see speed limits drop by 10 mph just as you enter the jurisdiction of a small town. That's one problem.

No More Cars

by Conroy

Will all London streets be this empty in 2050?

There was a story out today that the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, is considering banning cars from urban centers by 2050. Such a proposal is both wildly unrealistic and terribly misguided...fortunately the story isn't true. What the European Commission is actually proposing is to eliminate diesel and gasoline powered cars from European cities by mid-century.

This idea is both reasonable and worthwhile. Eliminating traditionally powered cars - and replacing them with cars that use "cleaner" technologies - makes both environmental and economic sense, assuming of course that alternative energy approaches are fully realized. Electric cars are inherently clean and draw power from the electric grid, and ultimately power plants, which are far easier to "clean-up" then individual cars and trucks. Other technologies like hydrogen fuel cells promise even cleaner energy, but this technology has a long way to go before it is affordable and can be applied to personal transportation.